The Lets Read Podcast - 228: KIDNAPPED DURING SCHOOL | 30 True Scary Stories | EP 216

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about things that happen After Dark, New Apartments, & Kidnappings... HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsRead ♫ Background Music & Audio Remastering: INEKT https://www.instagram.com/_inekt/

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If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Ben MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Back in the summer of 1984, me and an old high school buddy, Connor, were self-publishing a horror zine out of my mom and dad's basement over in Shreveport. For those who don't know, zine is short for magazine, but the term specifically refers to any small-time self-publishing operation where the prints are either sold for a few cents if not given away for free. The 80s and early 90s were the golden age of zines. It's no coincidence

that zines basically died out once website creation became easy, so think of zines as being like the internet before the internet was even a thing. They plugged a gap in the demand for uncensored underground and everything from punk rock to anarcho-communism and like I already mentioned, ours were centered around the horror genre. We called it Head Trauma, and the covers always featured different drawings of this mascot character that Connor designed. It was a guy with an HT shirt whose head was revoltingly cracked open due to the titular head trauma.

Each issue was filled with a bunch of gruesome, poorly written horror stories, usually penned by me while Connor dealt with the illustrations. We also included a bunch of horror-related news stories, new film releases and the like, then our final section was a bunch of what we called Reader's Correspondence. The RC section consisted of one or two letters from our readers, which tended to be their own stories of real-life horrifying events. I'd say about 70% of these were written by yours truly, partly to pat out the issues and partly to make it look like

we had more readers than we did. But then every so often, we'd get a letter from an actual reader. Most of these submissions were either completely unintelligible or were just too tame to make it into the pages of our gruesome little horror zine. However, other times the submissions were actually pretty good, and in one or two cases, genuinely scary. And this is the story of the second truly scary letter that we got from a person claiming to be a reader, and how it culminated in the most terrifying few moments of my life. So we had this P.O. box set up so nothing would show up at my parents' house, but having one also made us look like a legitimate business too, which probably helped with the

submissions, but I don't know. I'd check it maybe once or twice a month, never really expecting anything too special, but then this one time, I found something very unusual. It was an envelope, all creased and kinda of grimy looking, and the address looked like it had been written by a third grader with some broken fingers or something. I didn't even really want to touch it at first, at least not without a pair of sanitized surgical gloves. But in the end, curiosity got the best of me and I decided that I'd see what was inside. I open the thing up, pull out this folded up piece of notepaper, and the first thing I noticed is the squashed mosquito on one side. It was a real

big skeeter too, glued to the page by its own dried up guts, and after flicking the thing off with a grimace and a shudder, I unfolded the page and got to reading. To this day, I've kept that letter pressed and framed like a trophy, so I can show you exactly what it said and the exact way it was written too. And I quote, Hello, HT. I like to read your comic books, but your story, Nightmoon, made me very angry because it is wrong. You think you know about the world, but you were just a stupid kid. But be happy because I can teach you. I can teach you a lot of secret things if you want to learn them. All sorts of things, because I've been alive for a very long time.

I'm a vampire. I don't care if you think I'm a liar. I know that I'm real and I can prove it. I've eaten nothing and drank only blood since October 31st, 1978, and this would have killed me if I wasn't a vampire. There are many other ways I can prove I am real, and when you believe me I can answer any questions you got about what it's like to live like this. I put my phone number at the end of this letter and I want you to call me. I don't think you will because a kid like you would probably soil his pants if he saw the

things that I've seen. Do or don't, it's your funeral. The night moon thing he referred to was just some dumb story that I wrote about vampires and if you think the title is bad, you should have read the actual text. But at the end of the day, head trauma was just a labor of love. We kind of knew that it sucked, but it was kind of a thrill to leave copies in random places. It was punk rock, art terrorism, and we left copies as far as New Orleans sometimes. The point is that we had no idea where this guy had found out about us, and we also had no idea if he was even real or not. For all we know, it was one of our friends playing a prank on us or something.

So me and Connor batted around the idea of just calling the number and finding out if the guy was actually genuine. We figured that at worst it was just a prank or the guy was just crazy. But on the other hand, it would make for a cool segment in our next planned issue of Head Trauma which we were already behind on gathering content for. Even if I just recorded the guy's rants, wrote them up, and published them, if the stuff that came out of his mouth was anything like what he'd written, it'd make for some disturbing content. So, we gave him a call. Connor's stepdad was a big time exec exec at some Lafayette-based construction company,

and he had an old conference call machine that we could use to make a recording of the call. One night, when his parents were out, we set the thing up in Connor's bedroom and gave the dude a call. I was definitely expecting the guy to be some kind of head case, so when he actually picked up the phone and sounded semi-articulate, I was taken aback. The guy called himself Michael, and I swear from just talking to the guy you'd think that he was just your average Joe, working as an overnight supervisor in some warehouse out in the parish. Obviously this was totally different to the way he'd written his

letter, but when we brought it up, he apologized for his tone and lack of literary skills, admitting that he'd written it when he was particularly hungry, quote unquote. Right when he says that word, me and Connor just shoot each other a look as if to say, ah, here we go. Then I asked him exactly what he meant by hungry. Again, in a perfectly calm and well-spoken manner, Michael describes how his hunger is basically no different than that of humans. He gets hungry, just like regular folks do, and when he gets hungry, he had to eat. He eats breakfast, lunch, and dinner just like normal people, only he spaces his meals out through the night, not the daytime. He was also quick to add that

he obviously couldn't just go around sucking people's blood as the cops would be on to him in no time. Instead, he drank the blood of chickens, pigs, and cows, just about any kind of animal you can imagine. The whole time me and Connor had been listening to the guy in what amounted to a state of disbelief. The first wave came when the guy sounded normal on the phone, but then the second came when we realized that this, this wasn't any prank. The guy wasn't some dysfunctional freak, he was a seemingly normal dude who just so happened to live as a freaking vampire. I say living as because there's no way in God's green earth that we believe this guy was actually a vampire, delusional or imaginative to the point where he thought he was, maybe, but an actual one.

It's impossible. They don't exist. But just because vampires don't exist didn't mean this guy wasn't some goldmine of content, at least to me. He was talking like a schizo, no doubt, but it was an interesting schizo, especially when you thought of it as all just fiction. So I'm talking to the guy, while Connor is scribbling all kinds of ideas down and scribbles in shorthand doodles, and we talk about all sorts of stuff, basically detailing all of Michael's weird takes on vampirism and how Hollywood had gotten it all wrong. There's seriously way too many things to list, so I'll just get to the part that matters, which is when we circled back to the

idea that his only sustenance was the blood of recently slain animals. Now we knew that was impossible, because we'd already asked around after reading his claim in the letter he wrote, and we found out that yes, drinking blood would keep you alive for a while if you were starving, but only for a couple of weeks or whatever, as it's basically just all protein and very little else. It was basically a given that the guy was eating other stuff just to stay alive, even if he did deny it, but what did interest us was his claim that he drank like half a gallon of fresh blood in one sitting. Connor mouthed the words like nonsense at me, shaking his head silently at me from across the table, but

I remember raising my hand as if to say, hold on, before I gently introduced Michael to the idea that we might need some proof that he was able to do something that would make most others puke. I expected him to act all flaky or to make some excuse as to why this was impossible, but no. Michael actually offered us an invite to his home so we could see for ourselves. Connor started shaking his head even harder at the idea of just driving over some button down Psycho's house, so I replied by asking Michael if he'd be open to meeting up in a public place, albeit at night, of course. Again, we're surprised by how chilled he seemed about arranging a public meetup somewhere, and after agreeing to call us back if he needed to change the arrangement, we hung up after a pretty amicable goodbye. We'd landed our very own

interview with the vampire. Now granted, the vampire was just a crazy guy, but he was a crazy guy who said he didn't mind us photographing him drinking copious amounts of blood. If this wasn't going to make for insanely good content for the zine, I didn't know what else would. So as crazy as it sounds, we actually started preparing to meet with Michael. We got together a camera, a fairly new cassette recorder, Connor's dad's gun, just in case things got weird, and one other thing. We brought a chicken, a live one, from a guy in my neighborhood who kept a hen house in his backyard. I know, it was a dumb, cruel idea, but we didn't want this guy to show up with a half gallon of corn syrup so he could pull off

an elaborate piece of fakery. We figured if he really did live the life that he said he did, he'd probably appreciate us bringing along a little snack. That way we could photograph him biting into this live chicken or whatever he does and beef up our reputation as a zine when we publish the pictures. After that, all we had to do was wait until about 10pm when we'd drive over to a big old grocery store parking lot, the perfect combination of quiet and secluded, but public and well lit. When we arrived, there was no one waiting to meet us there. This didn't come as much of a surprise at first. We figured that he'd just bailed on us at zero hour and that we'd have to drive home with

nothing to show for the journey. But even so, we thought that we better just hang around for a while just in case anyone did actually show up. And show up they did. After maybe 10 or 15 minutes of sitting in my car, wondering if every car that went past would finally be Michael, one pulled into the lot and parked just a few spots away from us. It was a pretty nice car and the guy that got out looked to be about mid-forties and sort of a dad type, but when he got out of his car and started walking towards us, we just knew. We called his name and he replied, yep, that's me, before he came forward and tried to shake our hands. It's only when we got close that

we saw just how skinny he was. The dude looked like someone had just slapped a bunch of skin onto the skeleton and then brought it to life and suddenly, it got real believable that the guy lived on very little but fresh blood. I was actually scared to shake Michael's hand, but he seemed so nice at first that I figured it'd be rude not to. After all, we were basically going to exploit this guy's delusions to boost our zine's profile. The least we could do is shake the guy's hand, I guess. We exchanged a little small talk, with Michael actually making a joke of how nervous we seemed. That kind of broke the ice, and after that, we went over a couple of things to make sure that he was okay with us taking his picture. He had only one request, which was that he got to

wear a balaclava since he didn't want any of his co-workers to see the pictures. We thought this was a reasonable enough request, so Michael goes to put his mask on while me and Connor just sort of stared at each other in disbelief for a second. Once we snapped out of it, we put the tape recorder on the hood of the car, switched it on, and then Connor went to get Michael's snack. We didn't quite know how he'd receive it, but just as he'd been since the phone call, he was real nice about it and thanked us for the gift. We got ready to take pictures, thinking that he was about to bite into its neck right then and there, but he laughed when he realized that that's what we expected of him. He told us that he visited butcher shops and slaughterhouses, that it was easy to get a hold of

animal blood and that it came big and cheap. There was no need to endanger himself by hurting people, even though human blood was traditionally the most satisfying. He might have been a vampire, but he wasn't a monster. Those were his exact words too, and the laughter we let out sounded a little less nervous than it might have done otherwise. Michael's little feeding ritual was pretty civilized. He just poured the blood into a glass and then drank it. Fortunately, he brought his own blood and his own cup, but for the sake of the shoot, he agreed to slaughter the chicken before drinking its fresh blood. We moved around behind the car, just so any curious passerby wouldn't be able to get a look at what we were doing. Then right as we got the camera ready, Michael took out a small

penknife, took the chicken out of the box, and started waving it back and forth by its feet. The chicken went from flapping around to completely limp in a matter of seconds, and I remember thinking, Jesus, this guy's done this before, huh? Next thing I know, he kneels down, empty big gulp cup in front of him, and he cuts the chicken's throat with a knife. Not even just one slice, either. He literally sawed into the chicken's neck for a second before it jerked its head back. The blood came out slow at first, not the kind of spray that I was imagining, but after a few seconds,

it became this steady drip into the cup and continued until it was about a third of the way full. There wasn't much in there at all by the looks of things, but Michael seemed to appreciate that we wanted to see something first hand, so we just went along with it, even if he was quick to tell us that the amount wouldn't even constitute a light snack for him. Then, after asking us if we were ready, Michael gulps the whole thing down in one go. Call me crazy, but I thought Michael ruled in that moment. Real or not, crazy or sane, the guy was a legit blood drinker, but I thought Michael ruled in that moment. Real or not, crazy or sane, the guy was a legit blood drinker, and I thought he was just about the most hardcore dude I'd ever

met, especially since he had the appearance of some buttoned down office worker. He repeated what we assumed to be the lie about drinking nothing but blood, but then after that, I think we were just a little too gassed in what we'd seen to think of any serious questions to actually ask him. I remember asking him if he was into metal, and he wasn't. Connor asked if he had a wife or kids or anything, and he said no. Then right as we asked what year he was born, something we'd neglected to do during that first call, Michael started to act a little strangely. The whole time he'd been super friendly and easy to talk to, which I know sounds crazy considering how obviously unhinged he was, but that's the truth. It just seemed like he was happy that someone was paying some interest in him, so I figured the last thing he wanted was

to scare us off. But then he did scare us off, and he scared us bad. Over the course of a minute or two, Michael went from smiley and talkative to quiet and uneasy. The only way I can describe it is, you know when someone seems like they're about to puke? They go quiet, start touching their stomach, blowing out air, stuff like that. Well, that's what Michael was doing. I asked him if he was okay, thinking he was about to puke up the chicken blood that he just drank, but he replied by assuring me that he was okay, thinking he was about to puke up the chicken blood that he just drank, but he replied by assuring me that he was okay and that he just needed a minute. He stared off into the distance for a second, trying to regain his composure or something, then the next thing, he just shoots me this look.

This dead-eyed, soulless look and starts to breathe heavy. I swear, man, I must have watched a thousand horror movies by that time. All the old Argento stuff, Hammer Horror, Weird Japanese stuff and experimental Soviet cinema. But nothing scared me quite the way that Michael did looking at me that night. It was just how quick he turned and how drastic. He went from a nice middle-aged guy to looking like a monster, and it didn't help that there was still a little blood in his mustache either. It lasted maybe only one or two seconds, until I piped up and said his name.

He seemed to snap out of it, giving us an apologetic look, then told us that he had to leave. You can bet your bottom dollar that we didn't have a single objection him to doing exactly that. In fact, I think we were back in my car and driving out of the lot before it even got his keys out of his pocket. Connor was just as terrified as I was. He was the one with his dad's gun, meaning he was the one who would have to use it if things went south. And for a few seconds back there, things really did seem like they were about to go south and fast too. We were so scared that for a while, we seriously debated not publishing the story or any of the pictures.

We had to call Michael just to make sure that he was cool with it before actually going ahead with it. He was real nice on the phone that second time and he apologized for suddenly leaving like he did, but let me tell you, I'm really glad that we chose to meet in a public place like that. Now we published the story, published the pictures, and really got zero reaction and felt totally heartbroken. We felt like we'd uncovered a huge story, something that larger publications would kill to get their hands on, but the scoop didn't generate any more hype than usual and some people outright accused us of faking the whole thing. Most thought it was a cool story

but that's all it was. A story. One backed up with misleading pictures of a guy conveniently in a mask. It was incredibly frustrating not to be able to properly convey just how terrified I was and being the only two witnesses to it really strengthened my friendship with Connor. Neither of us believed the dude was an actual vampire, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that this dude believed that he was a vampire enough to actually want to drink our blood. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why he was staring at me the way he did, not in my mind anyway, and the fact that he just walked off like an alcoholic walking away from a bar. It was chilling, beyond chilling in fact.

It was terrifying looking back. So way back when I was still living with my mom and dad up in Idaho, their place was out in the sticks, meaning that I used to have to drive a good 20 minutes just to get to a county-maintained road, and after that, I'd have to drive another 40 minutes into the city to go to school and work. I'd go to school in the mornings and afternoons, then at night, I'd bartend at this little steakhouse for my beer money. Shifts tended to run well past 11 and then we'd have to break down and clean everything so it wasn't unusual for us to clock out at about 12.30 or 1am. So this one night, I'm driving home, totally exhausted, and I get to the end of the pavement and start blasting down this tiny dirt road in that real country dark where all you can see is

a little cone of headlight in front of you. Scrub brush and grass make this sort of wall on either side of the road so it's like driving down a little chute of scraggy little branches and I'm coming around this corner when suddenly I spot something in the road ahead of me. I slam on the brakes and shoot this wall of dust out ahead of me but through the dust sitting something in the road ahead of me. I slam on the brakes and shoot this wall of dust out ahead of me, but through the dust, sitting centered in the beam of my headlights, is this white, hunched over figure. It has long legs and haunches like some type of jackrabbit, but it's a good four feet high and kind of lumpy,

like an illustration from those scary stories books, if you remember those. Needless to say, I'm just about scared to death, completely rigid in the driver's seat trying to work out what in God's name I'm looking at. It kind of rocks back and forth a little bit, then shivers, and the way I'm looking at this thing, the way it's shaped, makes no sense at all. I stare at it for a good minute, just idling in the middle of this road, trying to make some kind of story to myself to explain what I'm looking at, but I'm completely stumped. Slowly I start creeping the car forward, and as I'm getting close enough to see the shapes of its muscles and the shine of its fur,

the thing hops up. The part I thought that looked like a head with a long ear stretches up, suddenly changing its whole shape like the creature of the Thing movies. I remember letting out some kind of scared cry, probably a lot more female sounding than I'd ever be comfortable admitting. Still nearly invisible, except for its white striped legs and underbelly, what turned out to be a huge jet black bowl that had been sitting on the edge of the road stood up, showing part of its body that had been hidden behind folded black legs and staggered off into the bushes to find a spot to

sleep where people weren't blasting it with high beams. Yes, I know what you're probably thinking, and yes, I felt like an idiot later, but in the moment where it was rising up like something unfolding itself, I swear that was probably the most terrified I'd ever been in my life. I had no idea what I was looking at. I was exhausted, and my eyes were already playing tricks on me because of the dark. It was just this perfect storm to make me think that I was looking at some monster that was about to lunge from my car or something. I've always been extra careful driving at night and it goes back to that night in the early 2000s. Take care driving in the country at night folks, it's a whole other ballgame out there. So, call me weird for doing this, but back when I was a kid, I used to have this weird ritual sometimes when I was finding it hard to sleep. I'd go to my bedroom window, look out into the night, and just kind of absorb how peaceful and dark it all was. I'd tell myself something like,

everyone else is sleeping, and you should be sleeping too. And then I'd count off all of our neighbors saying how they were asleep, and then I'd count off a bunch of animals and tell myself that they were probably asleep too. After a while of doing that, I get drowsy enough to actually slip back into bed and fall asleep, but then this one night, I saw something that had me running to my parents' room in pure terror. So like I said I'm looking out the window doing my thing when all of a sudden I see someone jump the fence to our backyard. It must have been a person because it was way too big to be an animal but the way the person moved was just sort of unnatural. Looking back on it they were probably some kind of criminal or something maybe someone actually being pursued by the cops or whatever.

But seeing them slither through our backyard with nothing but moonlight to illuminate them, they seriously looked like some kind of nightmare creature. The person made the motion with their head that they were looking around frantically, then they hid behind a bush. I just remember being petrified that they were going to attack our house. For what seemed like an eternity, they stayed there, probably just listening out for signs of the cops. Then after a few more minutes, they moved closer to our house than disappeared into the darkness. And that's when I freaked out. I bolted to my mom and dad's room, wailing about how a monster was coming to get us. They just thought it was a nightmare, but when I insisted that something was outside trying to get in, I remember my dad just changing his demeanor totally. He grabbed an old Louisville slugger out of the bedroom closet then marched

down the stairs to face whoever it was. There was no one there, and I figured the guy had jumped our fence after finding a spot that he could clear or something but at the time I was inconsolable. The fact that my dad had grabbed a weapon before going down to fight whatever it was that was trying to get to us, that just confirmed in my mind that we were in extreme danger. I didn't want my dad to get hurt and if he did, there was no one left to protect me and my mom. The thought sent me into a full panic attack before my dad returned to finally calm me down. My parents still tell this story, most recently to a girl that I was dating who found it equally amusing. I mean, I guess I do too. I mean, I was just a kid after all, but I swear, I was so scared that the memory is just burned into my mind,

even all this time later. I have quite an unconventional IT job and it means that I work from home, but it also means that I work from home but it also means that I work nights. So on this cold February night a few years back, I'm working away when I heard the stuff on the coat rack in the living room rattle like it does when the door opens. I thought it might be my cat climbing on the coats as she normally does when she's got an attack of the zoomies and I want to take her down before she ripped up my new nice jacket. However, instead of finding a cat climbing things that she knows she's not allowed on, I was greeted by the sight of a complete stranger.

He demanded to know where his stuff was, and after me insisting for about five minutes that I have no clue who he was, he started threatening me. My phone was in my room and I wasn't willing to turn my back on this guy because I just had this gut feeling that he was going to go for me. He seemed like he had had a bit too much to drink, probably a bit of something else too because he went from 1 to 100 in terms of aggression and the fact that he'd somehow gotten into my flat just scared the bejesus out of me. I literally had no idea what was going on and that's when I was

saved by an umbrella. For Christmas that previous year, my girlfriend had gotten me this really swanky umbrella with a handle that looked a lot like that of a Japanese katana. It cost her almost 200 quid for the research that I did and it was worth every penny in more than one respect. It looked really real, to the point where I actually felt a bit uncomfortable carrying it out and about with me. It was extendable, so it wasn't like a big sword, but one of those smaller katana type swords whose name I'm sure someone in the comments is bound to help me out with. It also had this fake leather sheath type holder to it, meaning that when you put it

away, it looked so much like a little sword that it was uncanny. And that's what saved me from god knows what that night. I grabbed the umbrella, then grabbed a hold of the handle like I was about to unsheath it. And it worked, almost too well. The guy actually put his hands up like please don't shoot me kind of motion, then started backing up saying that he'd just leave if I allowed him to. But the trouble was, I was blocking his exit, so I had to like circle around him to give him some room to get out. The whole time I'm thinking, if he calls my bluff on this brawly, I'm up the creek because if it came to it, I'd be defending myself with a freaking

umbrella when I had no idea if he had any weapons on him. Luckily, he didn't, and with nothing but a bloody umbrella, I forced the guy out of my flat and slammed the door. After that, I ran to my bedroom, which doubled as my office back then and I called the police. To this day, I have no idea how he got into my flat. The police thought I accidentally left the door on the latch, but told me to change the locks just in case. Not very encouraging outcome, but there was very little they could do.

They never caught the guy, so I still don't know why he was in my flat, if there was an actual malicious reason, or if it was all just some weird mistake. It still bugs me to be honest, and I always double check when I close my front door at night, just in case it really was just a daft mistake that led me to one of the scariest encounters of my life. So so Way back when I was a teenager, but still living with my parents, I used to have this super messed up sleeping pattern and every night after they went to bed, I had this little ritual. I'd go down to my car, smoke up, listen to music, and just kind of zone out. Sounds kind of dumb, but those are some of the fondest memories of my teenage years.

I discovered a ton of new music that way and I felt that I had my own space to really do my Sounds kinda dumb, but those are some of the fondest memories of my teenage years. I discovered a ton of new music that way and I felt that I had my own space to really do my own thing and looking back on it, I think it served as meditation time to work out stuff that I had going on in my head. It was my chill out time, something I valued, but then on one occasion, things got pretty freaking creepy. Everything was quiet as I decided on the next CD to play when, out of nowhere, I heard what sounded like leaves crunching outside.

My car is facing the inner wall of the garage and the actual garage door was only half closed because it used to get stuck if you shut it all the way. So when I looked in my rearview mirror, I could just about see this pair of legs coming up the driveway. The motion activated floodlights in the garage did not illuminate since the door was half closed, but still this person keeps walking up our driveway. Since it was quite a long driveway, I had time to quickly and quietly head back inside and go up to the kitchen where I could get a view of the front door. It was still quite dark, but I could make out the shape of a a view of the front door. It was still quite dark, but I could make out the shape of a person standing at the front door. They stood there for a moment, not doing or saying anything, just staring at the door like they had x-ray vision or something.

Obviously, this was extremely creepy behavior for a quiet suburban neighborhood at 3am, and I'm in no mood to mess around and find out. So I reach for my phone and I just called 911 but after waiting for another minute that felt like an eternity, the person turned around and walked away, back down the driveway and into the street, being careful to avoid the only streetlight. Before the police had arrived, he was gone. They started to search the area but found no one. One officer came to ask questions and get a description but it was so dark that I couldn't make out anything useful. And to this day, I still to live out in the middle of nowhere here in

Arkansas. Since I lived alone at the time, it was all I could afford without breaking into my savings too hard and the place was a total mess. But it was also very big. It was a large three bedroom home, two stories and I guess the realtor figured that I was going to fix it up but I just needed a place to live that wasn't around too many people, so it suited me perfect. Anyway, the house was right on the highway, and a dirt road connected to that highway connected my place to houses that were a few acres behind my own. It was around midnight one night when I was still awake in the room where I kept

my PC. All the lights were off, and suddenly I could have sworn that I heard voices on the front porch of my home. My PC room was connected to that porch by a window. I immediately tensed up and listened. I couldn't make out much, but I was still so sure that I heard someone speaking. Another detail about the house at the time was that the front door and most of the windows, thank god not the case for the one in my office, didn't have blinds or any means to cover them up. Up to this point, since I lived in the middle of freaking nowhere, I didn't lock my doors most of the time either. Looking back, I think I had my front door locked, but at the time I couldn't remember if it was.

There were far too many exposed windows to just walk up to it and lock it too, at least to my paranoid mind that night. Most of my lights were off thankfully though so I slipped back to my bedroom which was down a hallway and I grabbed my shotgun and locked the door to my bedroom and waited. I still remember putting my iPhone to the base of the door, turning on the camera and using it to see out into the connecting hallway in case someone had come inside. Thankfully, I never saw anyone. I finally fell asleep a few hours later. But later though, I heard about how a neighbor on my dirt road had had a son that had been arrested in another state. The son had broken out and fled back home to that

exact house around the time I heard those voices on my porch. He'd been tracked down eventually and arrested there, and it was only half a mile from my home. Back when I was in high school, I stayed over one night at a friend's house because she had an EKG the next day and wasn't allowed to sleep for it. She knew that I was a night owl, so she usually invited me over to keep her company and make sure that she didn't snooze off whenever this happened. So one of these nights, we're sitting in her room at around 2.30 or 3am, and her parents and her little brother had all gone to bed sometime at around 10ish. And none had exited their room since, so we're sitting there, chatting about whatever we would have been chatting about at that time, and her doorbell rings. Now keep in mind, she is a distinctive doorbell sound. It's not a simple ding or chime, but more of a short music-y tone so we knew that we couldn't have

misheard it. So we went into the living room, me leading in pitch blackness because we weren't allowed to turn on the lights after her parents went to sleep and the only light in the room from the hallway is coming from the moonlight shining through the clear screen door where the doorbell was. From our position, we can't make out anyone near the doorway outside and we kind of just laugh it off and credit it to our imagination or a fluke. Then as we're walking back down the dark hallway to her room, we heard it again. At that point, my friend decided to step outside to look around which is something I don't think she'd ever have decided to do if she wasn't so sleep deprived.

She's usually faint hearted if we're being honest. And even though I thought we could have figured out a better plan, I had her back so I quickly followed her outside and stepped onto her brick driveway just about ready to fight if we needed to. And for our lives, we could not figure out what happened. She lived in an affluent neighborhood with big, spacious, well-mowed yards, so you'd have thought that we'd see someone dashing away if they had simply rung the doorbell and ditched. And each side of the house on our left and right were fenced off high, and it was unlikely they would have been able to run and leap over. And we timidly checked around her car, even inside and under it, and just nothing.

No signs anyone had been there or around the yard, and to this day I have no clue what was going on outside. Maybe a faulty doorbell, but she insisted after that it never had problems. It still kind of gives me chills thinking of it. So, I had a pretty crazy upbringing, and this is one of those stories that raises more questions than it answers, but just try to bear with me and appreciate it for what it is. I was finishing a book at around 4am and decided to get a drink of water, and when it got closer to my bedroom door, I realized that I could smell burning plastic. There was a small fire in the living room and my mother was asleep on the couch right next to it and my sister was just a few feet away in her

room. I was surprised to say the least. I yelled fire to wake up my mom, told her to get my sister and I went back into my room to get my phone to call 911. We went outside and stood in our lawn as the flames started to consume the living room, finally hitting some of my mother's hair products and the windows shattered just after I pulled my mother back from going back inside to get her purse. She had inexplicably a bunch of cash in her purse on the couch, so I'm glad I pulled her back though. Eventually the department came, neighbors came out to see what was going on, I wasn't wearing any pants or shoes, my reptiles died in the fire, and I was devastated. Now why is this creepy? Well, how did the fire start you might ask? I don't know. My mother was married to a meth-addled skinhead scumbag, and where was he when the fire started?

Outside, tweaking over his many paranoias, this guy was an absolute nightmare. Did he start it? I'm not sure. At the time, he seemed as surprised as we were, but looking back, I truly do wonder. So to start, let me make it clear that I was young, naive, and trying to be helpful. I was working a night shift at a customer service job when I was about 19. I'm a male, lightweight, and I don't really work out and I never carry anything for self-defense because I don't really have much on me that I consider valuable to lose. I also didn't think much of it. I believe it was a weekend and there were quite a few bars nearby so I wasn't concerned about being robbed to be honest. So I get off at about 2am and

I'm working in Syracuse, New York. Someone came up to me after I got into my car and asked if I had a lighter. I just politely explained that I didn't and so he asked if he could hitch a ride right down the street and for whatever reason I thought, sure, why not. I was kind of bored and wanted to see where this would take me and in hindsight this was incredibly stupid. Well down the street about a quarter mile this guy asked me to pull over and he gets out of the vehicle. It becomes clear that this guy is homeless. He walks over to the bus stop and takes out a makeshift cigarette and lighter from a hiding spot that he made and walks back over to the car and asks for a ride back since he didn't have any transportation. At this point I said screw it,

again I have no clue why I was stupid enough to go along with this. So he gets back in, I drive down the road and he asks me to stop and pull over so he can get out. It was actually pretty chill up to this point and we had some cool conversation. But as soon as we pulled over he just kinda stopped being cool and just stared straight. He wouldn't say a word. Immediately my heart sank and I thought I was dead. I just looked over at him and asked if he was good a few times then said have a good night I gotta get home. Whatever episode he was having he seemed to snap out of and said thanks and got night, I gotta get home. Whatever episode he was having, he seemed to snap out of,

and said thanks, and got out of the car. I'm like 80% sure that if I panicked, he would have escalated it and attacked me. He just had that look like he was about to do something awful, but couldn't muster up the courage to do it. And I like to think that me being personable enough kept him from doing it. Or maybe he just couldn't see anything of value. Now I just have a no hitch policy.

It seems kind of messed up, especially since I can honestly say that I was at fault here. But since then I just don't feel comfortable giving rides to strangers. I'm sorry. About 25 years ago, my sister and I were driving on a normally busy road, but it was late at night and was deserted. We could both see something flapping on the road up ahead. I asked what it was and my sister said she didn't know, but that it looked like a black garbage bag. I agreed. It really looked like a bag lying on the road being whipped lightly by the wind. As we approached it, it completely changed shape.

It went from being quite flat and small to morphing into a fully grown man on a bike. He was just standing there in the middle of the road with his bike. We pulled alongside and asked if he was okay, and he just nodded but didn't speak and then we drove off. We still talk about it because it was the strangest, creepiest thing ever and we both still can't explain what it was that we saw. Many Many years ago now, I was driving home from base one night along a dark stretch of desert road and I was talking with my wife on the phone. It was a little ritual that we had every time I got to leave, to kill a little time and get a head start on planning our quality time together, and this one night in question, there was nothing but a lone motorcycle ahead of me. Seeing as we were in the middle of the Mojave, the road we were on was generally straight but had some unpredictable curves because of the road loosely following a broad wash and

lake bed. The person ahead of me was going between 70 to 80 miles per hour and seemed generally familiar with the road. But then, they just sailed straight over the edge of a 45 miles per hour and seemed generally familiar with the road. But then, they just sailed straight over the edge of a 45 miles per hour curve going about 80. I made some reactive horrified sound and hung up with my wife. I immediately pulled over, called 911 and put them in my pocket, caught my trauma kit and put on my gloves. I'm an army medic so I was able to give the dispatcher way more detail as I explained what had happened when I stepped over the bank and see, to my surprise, not a crumpled body but a young guy, mid-twenties, picking himself up off the ground about 75 feet ahead of me and 15 feet below. He'd been launched from the motorcycle which was in

terrible shape about 30 feet from him. I told him to stay still and went through a quick evaluation, and he was basically fine, but super rattled, ended up having a broken collarbone and a mild concussion. Now it wasn't a ghost story, but I was absolutely certain that I'd just seen a person die, and was completely shocked to find him in fine form if a little shaken up. I still call it the Mojave Miracle when telling people about it because although I'm not a religious man, I think that's about as close to a miracle as I'm ever going to witness. Now a bit of background, I'm a truck driver, specifically doing shuttle runs for a factory

in my city. I run loaded trailers from the factory downtown to a warehouse about 20 miles away where I drop my loaded trailer, exchange it for an empty and take it straight back to the factory. I run this route about 7-8 times a night. I'm told it's a diamond in the rough as far as trucking jobs go. Anyway, my route has me cross this rather precarious highway bridge on the return trip. The bridge is only two lanes wide with no shoulder. The speed limit on the highway is 70 miles an hour but this bridge has a steep drop and a sharp curve down to surface level so the recommended speed to take this curve is about 45 at minimum. A few months ago at around 2am on a Wednesday I

was in the process of rounding this curve when a car was blocking the bridge and I nearly plowed right into it. The car didn't lose any control or smash in anything. There weren't any tire tracks on the pavement and the car didn't have any damage. The car in question was a brand new Mercedes SUV with dealer tags so it probably wasn't broken down. And nobody was in the car. Whoever was driving must have just decided to come to a complete stop in the middle of this practically blind corner, get out of his car, and walk away. The car couldn't have been there for longer than 20 minutes or so. It wasn't there when I drove past that bridge in the other direction.

I didn't see anyone walking along the highway either. I have no idea what was going on with the car but I unclenched my seat out of my butthole a minute later and I called the cops to get that car and I never heard anything about it afterward. I was in a little bar in Canada. I was getting drunk, chaining beers, and ended up chatting with an American Marine. We banter for a bit and become total bros almost instantly, and we spend the night trying to pick up girls acting like complete fools and joking around. When it's closing time, we find out that we're stationed at the same hotel, which is not a really big coincidence since it's the closest one.

We wobble to it, still cracking up and singing in the streets like lunatics, and after we finally arrive, we exchange phone numbers, and just before I enter the lobby, the Marine stops me. Hey, you want wanna see something? I get the feeling that he'll whip out his junk if I say anything but thankfully he reaches into his pocket and gets a weird looking box. He opens it to reveal a medal on the box and I nod in approval. This is a medal of honor, bro. I start immediately hyping him up. Bro, I had no idea you were a veteran. I jokingly saluted him and thanked him for his service. Curious, I asked him where he served. He tells me that basically the answer should be Afghanistan,

but in truth, he was in special ops somewhere in the Middle East. I asked him where, but he only answers that he can't tell, and after a little back and forth, he changed the subject and asked me, Hey man, you wanna hear something really disturbing? Of course, I agree. Nothing better than some crazy war stories. He lights a cigarette and starts telling me the story. Towards the end of his career, his group had the order to attack some terrorist hideout in the middle of nowhere. They went there expecting hell, but strangely there was almost no resistance. They killed a few people who fired at them, but most of the people there surrendered, almost begging to become prisoners.

Something strange is going on now. After interviewing a prisoner, they get the tip to walk about two miles east. The only thing they could get out of him even with the advanced interviewing technique, he told me with a little grin on his face. The squad split up and four soldiers went to check out on the tip. After about two miles as promised they found a big tarpaulin spread on the ground. After lifting it up they discovered a really big hole under it which was filled with grey disgusting rotten bodies and decided to quickly get away from there. At that point I tried to be the comic relief and asked him if anybody soiled their pants, and his exact words were, Nah man, we're hardcore spec ops, corpses don't scare us.

What made us leave was that they were still moving, man. He tells me they brought a few more guys with them and a video camera for documentation purposes. They lifted the tarpaulin again and took footage of the bodies squirming in the hole. A quick body count got about ten grey bodies slowly crawling in the hole, seemingly trying to get out. He told me that suddenly he felt something on his boot. One of them had grabbed him, and without even thinking he pulled out his knife and cut it. I asked him again if he about soiled himself with what just happened, but he just shook his head. Special ops are hardcore, man, I tell you. After that event, they all had to report to some superior authority.

They all got interrogated, and of course, the video camera got confiscated. None of their questions got answered and nobody must tell anything to anyone. In return, they would get a medal of honor and all the privileges that go with it, to which they agreed. After these pretty outlandish stories, he smiles and asks me if I want to see something even more awesome. He tells me to open the box and lift the medal and the stuffing under it. I'm not sure what it is, but when I realize, I almost puke on the spot. It was a wretched, disgusting gray finger.

I could swear that I saw it bend a little bit. He almost cries laughing at my reaction. Yeah bro, I wasn't kidding. I'm still thinking it's just some elaborate twisted joke and he just shrugs. Well, now you can tell the story too. Eventually, we say goodbye and go to our rooms. The next morning I see him in the lobby and we shake hands and he promises to offer me a beer next time. Next week I tried to call him, but apparently his phone number wasn't real, and I never had a chance to contact him ever again, and I haven't heard from him since. This one is from my time in the Scouts. I was 18 at the time and me and another Scout of my age took a bunch of 8-9 year old Scouts for a two night camping trip on a small mountain.

The trail was pretty easy but unpopular. It was a backwooded area with almost no traffic. On the first day of the hike we ended up seeing no one. As it's getting late we decide to make camp. The place we decided on was pretty far up the trail but had a clear line of sight downwards in the direction we came from. We light up a fire and make a great feast of s'mores and sausage. After a bit, everyone goes to sleep, except for me, of course. Feeling kind of adventurous, I decide to set up a hammock a little bit away from the tents to read a book under the stars.

At 10.30, I decide to call it a night, a little bit away from the tents to read a book under the stars. At 10.30 I decide to call it a night and I turn off my little pocket lamp. After my eyes get adjusted to the darkness I start noticing the silhouette of a man coming up from the trail. He's not using a light and I don't know why I got a pretty bad feeling about it almost immediately. I observe him as he walks up the trail and when he notices the camp, he just backs up slowly a few steps so as not to get in direct sight of us and stands there staring at the tents. Obviously he hasn't noticed me and I keep watching him standing there for about 10 minutes. After that, he starts backing away into the trees, takes off his pack and sits in a crouched position still staring at our camp, almost like a beast stalking a prey. I'm staring at him wide-eyed, ready to scream and alert the scouts if he moves too close, and this sort of standoff goes into about 3am when he finally gets up.

I'm completely tensed up and I see him now just standing up and staring at the tents like at the beginning. After a few minutes he finally turns around and walks back down the trail where he came from in a very meticulous way as to not make any sound. I let out a sigh of relief but stay perched on my hammock keeping watch until sunrise. In the morning I told the older scout about what happened and without asking anything else we just decided that it was time to head back. I still wonder what this guy was doing, just stalking us for hours. I was working in a museum. The building was gigantic, with four floors, three basements, and was planned to be expanded even further.

As part of an October event, we did an overnight stay with some students. The teens involved were mostly honor students, so we didn't expect any weird stuff besides your typical teenage hormones. The group activity was supposed to be some spooky themed laser tag in the safe zones and watching some horror keynotes on the big projector at midnight. After eating a bunch of pizza and some stories, every teenager fell asleep in a room on the third floor. If you ignore the mummy and a gigantic whale skull on the ceiling, it's a pretty comfy place to sleep in, I reckon. And the night was fine, until about 3am. Me and the other supervisors start to hear heavy footsteps coming from outside the room. Now the building acoustics can be pretty wild, but these were really close.

The doors were closed, and after a quick headcount, I'm reassured to see all the teens are there sleeping. We debated going out and after a bit I decided to grab one of those heavy duty flashlights and go investigate since we'd be held responsible if another kid snuck in with the others. As I went down to the second floor and inspected the area, I see everything was how it was supposed to be except for this section with oversized wooden blocks. They were supposed to be neatly stacked but now they were randomly scattered on the floor. Probably one of the teens earlier had knocked it over during the tag game. I'm feeling glad that I caught it before my boss and so I start stacking them back up. Suddenly, I'm startled by my walkie-talkie turning on. It was the other supervisor and she sounded kind of frantic. She told me that she needed me back on the third floor in the corridor

between the sleeping room and the bathroom. I climbed back up and found her frantic, looking quite pale. The corridor was near a kids section with all sorts of toys and make-believe objects like puppets, a playhouse and such. There was a toddler wagon in the middle of the hallway, filled to the brim with toys. We were both puzzled and surprisingly enough, she's the one to come up with a rationalization for it. Maybe it just rolled out since the floor is slightly slanted. I don't know. I look at her and nod. Yeah, that must be it. Even though that wouldn't explain the stepping noises, it's better not to freak her out more than that, so that's case closed for now.

We consider taking a camera from the storage room and setting it up, but after a bit, we both agree against it. The night was already too weird and we just had to survive until 10am for when the event was finished. We opted to take shifts and the night was pretty fine except for some complaints from the teens that there was some kind of noise that kept waking them up. Me and the other supervisor didn't hear anything though and we wrapped this little sleep over as a success. After the event ended, still kind of freaked out, I decided to do my little investigation and ask around for weird stories. The place had no official history with ghosts, but one of the buildings that was merged into it

was a lab of some sort. Back in the day, the place had a pretty catastrophic tuberculosis outbreak, causing it to be abandoned for a while before getting bought and turned into a museum. Also, there was no supernatural stuff but one of my seniors made me aware of the third basement that most of the employees avoided for some reason. This part of the building was housing the antique medical equipment that couldn't be put on display and my jaw drops as he describes the stuff that's in there. I hadn't had the gut to go by myself but I gag every time I think that there were pickled children just three stories below the room that I spent the night in. When I was younger, I was home alone chilling, and my parents were out and my older brother

that was supposed to be looking after me went away with his friends. Not that I'm complaining, I love to have the house and the console to myself, plus I could use it on the big TV. That was a pretty big thrill back then. I finish setting up and I'm like a king on the big couch with a big bowl of Cheetos at my side. Suddenly I hear a knock at the door. I jumped up thinking that it was my parents but thinking about it I didn't hear the car and they have the keys anyways. It's probably my brother who forgot something I initially thought. I open the door and I'm startled as I see this guy standing completely still, eyes straight ahead. As I'm typing I'm trying to find the words to describe his face

but he's just completely bland. No defining features that I can come up with. The type of guy that you wouldn't remember even if you had a conversation with him for more than a minute. I'm standing at the door dumbfounded and after a bit, I snap out of it and ask him what does he want, which he answers, can I come inside? In a deadpan, monotone voice. Nothing else. Everything I ask him is answered with the same phrase. What are you doing? Can I come inside? Are you one of the neighbors? Can I come inside? Who are you? Can I come inside? No inflection in his voice, no movement from him, he's just staring blankly in front of him. Eventually I say that if he doesn't talk or look at me that I'm

gonna call the cops because he's being really weird. I tell him to quit it if it's some kind of sick joke, to which he just answers, Can I come inside? I shut the door and loudly pretend to call the police to scare him away. I can still see his silhouette through the frosted glass that he's still standing there. I'm starting to get actually spooked now so even if I risk getting my brother scolded I decide to call the cops for real this time. I describe the situation and they tell me to hide somewhere while they arrive in case he decides to break in. Now before hiding I quickly snap a few pictures of the glass for proof and go hiding in the storage room,

shaking in my boots. And after the longest 15 minutes of my life, I finally hear them pull up. So I peek out of the storage door and I see the red and blue lights indicating to me that it's safe to go and see what's actually going on. The creepy guys finally left, so I just end up opening and giving a statement to the officers. Even though I showed them the pictures, they really didn't seem too convinced. It's just a shadow of a man standing at the front door. I should have taken a picture of him, or better yet, I should have filmed it. After my big brother finally came back, I ended up spending the night completely freaked out. Now that I'm looking back at it, it's even creepier. Nobody takes

this story seriously and the only thing I have to prove it is those photos. To be continued... so I'm sorry if I don't have every detail and exact context. I was about six years old in an old Catholic school, the strict traditional kind. Mandatory uniform, prayers in the morning, all that good stuff. The teachers often doubled as priests, and they were all pretty strict. It was a good time, though. We had a lot of extra activities outside the school. My favorite was one of the nurses of the school, because she was particularly kind to me. Compared to those stuck up priests she was a breath of

fresh air. My friends often teased me about her being my girlfriend and I couldn't lie and say that she had never traversed my mind. She was only working part time there so I would be excited whenever she'd be there. I'd often pretend to be sick just to be with her, and she didn't seem to mind. She would often ask me about my life, my parents, and other random things. One day, as I was helping her to move cleaning supplies after school, she told me to bring her a broom and bucket that was located in the schoolyard bathrooms on the complete other side of the school. Of course, I obliged and went to the location jumping around.

After I get to it, I scan the room and see nothing. I deduce that it must be in one of the stalls. As I approach the stall I hear the bathroom door slam shut and lock. I try to force it open but it's impossible. I can't even climb and see out the little windows. I decide to wait for the nurse that was surely going to come back to open it, right? But nothing. After a while I accept my fate and I think that I'm just going to sleep there overnight. And after a while I suddenly

hear the key going inside the door, and when it opens, I am faced with one of the head priests. I'm thinking I'm going to get scolded like crazy, but I'm very surprised to see him kneeling and calmly asking me, you know the secret passage in the fence back there? I've seen you go through it before, it's okay. I want you to run to it and go back to your home, alright? I just nod and start running. I'm a little shocked, but I don't question it. I squeeze myself in the little gap in the fence and run home, and the next day I notice the head priest paying close attention to me, but never mentioning what had actually happened.

Another thing is that after this day I never saw that nurse again, which was explained as her moving to another department. One thing also changed in that we now had two young priests transferred to the school that acted as security with frequent police checkups added to it. And it was only until way later that I learned that the nurse was involved in some kind of child trafficking ring, and that I would have been one of her victims, if not for a few years. These last five months I've been in a beach town on the west coast. Now the pay is really good and the spot is beautiful so I'm not complaining but most of the calls are just nonsense. The two main categories are rich old dudes from the cliffs crashing their luxury cars or having cocaine and

ladies of the night induced heart attacks. The other is harbor junkies and homeless people overdosing on heroin or whatever new drug is on the market at the moment. A lot of death, sure, but everything is pretty explainable and kind of expected. We're trained to understand the mechanisms of injury, a system made to anticipate injuries not readily visible. But this one, I still have no idea what could have happened. We got a call and get dispatched to an unresponsive mail at 6am. We're barely awake from a busy full moon night cleaning up degenerates and my partner and I drag ourselves onto the beach. Now generally bodies that are found in the morning have been there for hours which means it's pretty much over anyways. As we pull up we see a little crowd of morning joggers,

probably the ones that called. We sigh as we know we have to do all the little routines for appearances when we know there's no way in god's green earth that he could be resuscitated. We ask the crowd to clear and start the CPR. We roll up the body that was face down in the sand. He was clothed with shoes missing, and the first thing I notice is the skin. It's really cold, especially compared to the temperature around there. He's also extremely pale and a little wet, but the clothes weren't, so it wasn't drowning, that we know. I start the first compression and it comes soft, generally good compressions on an unconscious person breaks ribs,

but it seemed every rib in this guy's chest was already shattered. At the third compression, I can almost feel his heart in the palm of my hands, but kept pushing out of habit. As I kept doing the compressions, I started noticing his arms and collarbones are fractured as well. Now, I haven't even looked properly at his face since I rolled him since I don't like looking at dead people's faces no matter what but I jumped up when I did. It seemed every bone in his face was broken as well. Even his eyes seemed sunken into his broken orbit and I've never seen anything like that. Without paying attention it just looked like he's skinny but it was quite horrifying when you look at it up close. The strangest part was there wasn't a drop of blood anywhere around. I looked at my partner who had been watching me in shock since I started the CPR and we just decided to call it right then and there.

All I know is that the sheriff coroner's got involved but still I have no idea what could have caused those kinds of injuries to a human being. I got a story from northern Russia. It was during the mid-90s. I lived in a small town that was slowly dying out as the backbone factory fell apart along with the USSR. We used to have our little urchin street gang. Most of the parents couldn't care less about their kids and some of us didn't even have a place to sleep. We used to squat in an abandoned house and used it as our base as well. We never got into the real heavy criminal stuff, just some petty stealing from the markets and brawls with other groups

of stray kids. The conditions were extremely poor, but I still remember those times fondly. We had one kid named Pasha that used to live in the same apartment block as some of us and just next door to me. He was the youngest of the group and though he wasn't that useful as a brawler, as he was weak and malnourished, he was always weirdly funny and optimistic and cheered us up. We took him under our wing and he kind of became the group mascot after a bit. He was an adopted child and his mother was an old woman considered to be the number one booze hag on the block. We unironically thought that she was some kind of mad witch, always ragged with dirt on her face,

mumbling some nonsense and of course an intense stench of booze stuck to her. She was jobless and had no relatives or friends except for Pasha and it was clear that she was abusing the kid. All of us knew it, we could see the bruises on him and he didn't like to talk about that so we did our best to not even bring it up near him. Also I must say the situation for everybody was so bad that everything could be brushed off as a simple could be worse. Since our rooms had a common wall joining us together, we used to have a little code. He would knock on the wall three times and I would answer him with a single knock as to tell him I heard him and everything was good.

It was supposed to reassure him if he got scared of the dark, but I knew deep down his main fear was his crazy mother. One day he didn't come up to our base, but kept doing the code knocks on the wall at night. He didn't come for a few days, and even though I'm getting concerned, I still received the code for a few nights. I was too uncomfortable to go see him because of that witch, and I guess my friends thought the same, so we kinda never really discussed it. The next night, I don't hear the code. I try to knock in all kinds of different patterns, but no answers. He's probably asleep, I thought.

The next day, I decide to get it together and knock at his door. No one answered, but I'm pretty sure someone was there since you could see those old spy holes turn dark when someone watched. Another thing was that faint smell that I only recalled later on which reminded me of the meat department at the local market. There was definitely something rotting in there but that wasn't really surprising coming from a drunkard's flat. A week later you can smell a horrible stench from the hallway. My dad gets to reasoning and calls the cops to break in since the old hag wasn't answering the door. By the end of the day when we came back home, we see an improvised ambulance with some canvas roll attached to the roof and a few cop cars near the porch. We soon learned that the wrap in that canvas was Pasha's corpse. Rumor was that she

stabbed him multiple times and left him for dead. She left town and was never found as far as I know. I still think about those last knocks on the wall, and I wonder if it was him trying to call for help, or maybe it was his mother who was the one knocking. I was 15 years old living in a pretty quiet suburb. I used to spend most of my time in my best friend's house since he was kind of spoiled and had every game that ever existed and chill parents that would let him geek however he wanted. The quickest way to his home was through this giant drain channel, going a little below ground and cutting through the neighborhood, very convenient to say the least. One night after hanging out with my best mates I decided to go back home at about 1.30am since I had to help my dad with some renovation work the next day. Now usually I try to avoid going through the drain at night because there are zero lights and it's simply incredibly creepy to be honest.

After hesitating for a bit I decided that I'd still rather go through it than go the long way. I used my phone light for guidance and step down into it. The only sound that I could hear is the noise from my footsteps and I can only see a little cone of light produced by my phone as I'm advancing through while hugging the embankment. About halfway through it I started hearing some muffled sounds coming from the darkness. Initially it sounds like a little child or a small animal sobbing and I'm kind of creeped out but as I'm advancing I realize that it's clearly an adult putting on a child's voice. I feel a chill at my spine and my heartbeat is now completely off the charts. I decided to quickly

turn the light in the direction of the sound directly on my right. I only saw it for a second but the image is still burned into my brain. A grown man squatting at the top of the embankment, really fat and hairy. He had very long hair and was wearing a full pink bra and miniskirt with pink socks to match this grotesque outfit. The second I put my light on him we make eye contact and I can see his face is also smeared with makeup with mascara dripping down his eyes. I didn't even think and just start bolting through the exit and I swear that I could see him standing up as I turned my light away. Also the sobbing had completely and suddenly ceased. This was the fastest I had ever run

and I kept at it a little bit around the block until I was sure that I wasn't being followed. specific about the location, but this happened around Pennsylvania. Most I'll say is that I don't live close enough to any metropolitan area worth noting. Thus, my drives are long, lonely, and even smelly. I was doing Chinese food deliveries and to be frank, I was getting sick of it. I can't even eat Chinese anymore. The smell of the food has become so embedded in my nose and brain that I can't even bring myself to put the food in my mouth without gagging. I was rolling up to the restaurant for the next pickup of the night. I'm surprised as the bagging lady kept handing me bags, over ten of them. Jesus Christ. Busy night, I guess. Lots

of orders? She shakes her head. Nope, only one guy. As she hands me the ticket, I see the bill is massive, floating around $500. I'm looking at the address, and even though it's pretty far away, I'm kind of excited because generally those kinds of massive orders means one heck of a tip. I begin driving and taking in the details just in case this dude orders again in the future. The place is completely remote remote and I can see the key road features disappearing as I go further along. First, the sidewalks stop running alongside the roads, after that the street lamps, then the white lines on the ground and soon after I start hitting random gravel beds. I thought to myself that this better be worth it and prayed that I don't snap my axle or something else.

I arrive at the address and it's literally just a stop in the road in the middle of nowhere. No driveway, no signs, not even a mailbox. Thinking my GPS was bugged out, I decide to call the guy to clarify the address. Of course, no answer. I'm starting to think that I got lured into the middle of Hick Woods just to get murdered, and as I was starting to dial the restaurant to confirm the address, I see another car oncoming with its headlights shining on me. I'm like a gazelle frozen in fear. I see the car slowing down near me, accepting my end, dead from a drive-by shooting I was thinking. The car stops right next

to me and slowly rolls down its window. My tension goes down as I realize that he's just a pizza delivery driver. He asked me if this is the place and I realized that we couldn't have both had GPS mess-ups at the same time. Yeah, yeah, this is the place. They ordered pizza? Yeah, huge order too. He seemed really excited for the same reason as me initially. I don't even have time to say anything else and another figure comes out from the bush. He's holding a flashlight but isn't pointing it at anything, just a little off to the side, and he stutters, hey guys, food? Something is really uncanny about him and I felt even more uncomfortable than a minute before when I thought that I would get got by a drive-by. He's standing in a painfully bad posture, like visible scoliosis that you could

identify at a glance. He snaps the flashlight directly at my face, blinding me and says, Thank you for arriving first. He snaps the light to the other driver's face, and now with a clear voice he says, You lose. The other driver and I look at each other with a mix of fear and perplexion. I decide to get out of the car and start unpacking the bags, which wasn't the best move in hindsight. He snaps the light to a spot on the road. Here.

Please. He keeps alternating between lighting the spot and the other driver's face. What's your problem, man? He shouts while covering his eyes. I can tell the tension was rising and though I'm not enjoying this, I feel the best course of action is to finish the delivery and just get away from here. When my stuff is completely unpacked, I try to assist my pizza bro but the creep blinds me with the lights and hisses, don't help, in a clear voice again.

I hold my hands up and go back to my car, waiting for the delivery guy to finish as I decide to not leave him alone with this guy. During this downtime I finally get a good look at him. The guy is actually way taller than his awful posture made him look, at least over 6 feet. I'm rattled as this delivery guy kept dropping the pizzas on the road, cussing under his breath. I start texting my boss on the verge of a panic attack telling him I'm taking the night off after this one. As I lift my head from the phone and look back at them, I can see the delivery guy staring at me with wide eyes. He moves his head in a way as if to say look behind you, and I jump as I see the gangly dude

right next to my driver's window. He points down and says sharply, window. Too terrified to even contest it, I oblige and he slips in a bunch of bills through the window before it has even finished opening. Then when I saw next, I'll never forget. The guy stood up straight and jumped over my car. I could hear two distinct thuds on my roof. I saw the pizza guy bolting away, and before I could even open his door, I saw the lanky guy catching up to him. The most uncanny run I had ever seen, I could only describe it as running a beanbag race without the beanbag. My head went blank, and before I could see him catch him, I flort and just get out of there. And for 15 minutes I drive with adrenaline pumping through my veins expecting the guy to be on the road behind, running after me every time I look in

the rearview mirror. I don't even go back to the restaurant and decide to head straight up home. I down half a handle of whiskey and I just knock myself out. For a while, I was too nervous to go on deliveries or anywhere for that matter. I even had a dream about this creep. There has been a missing person case for the pizza delivery guy and they concluded that his car had skidded off the road since it was found wrapped around a tree. No sign of him though. The pictures showed a destroyed vehicle and thousands of dollars worth of food on the ground, completely torn apart. When I was a kid, around 12, I was calling my dad crazy old man as part of a game. A pretty inoffensive joke and we were used to teasing each other so that didn't feel

disrespectful to me at least. One day though, my mom took me aside and told me that I had to stop calling him that. I was surprised because she seemed genuinely concerned about it. Apparently some old girlfriend of his had tried to make him go insane. She didn't give me more details and I assumed that this was more for her comfort than my dad's. That was until I learned the whole story from other family members. About 20 years or so ago, my dad was known as a womanizer. He had his fair share of romances, but one time, he ended up with what everybody described as a crazy witch. And not metaphorically. She was apparently into black magic and curses way before it was just a trend for twitter teenagers. Still, they dated for a

while and after getting bored of it, he just dumped her without a second thought. The girl went completely crazy and started harassing him relentlessly. She was doing some unhinged stuff, like scratching his car and peeing on his door. I guess my dad was pretty unfazed by that, even kind of amused, but one day during a very public fight she told him, you made me crazy, and you'll go crazy for me. After that, she disappeared completely and not a word from her. Until months later my dad started to get really sick. This was completely out of the ordinary as he was a really healthy and athletic person. Heat stroke, delusions, weakness, his state was getting worse by the day.

Everybody was certain that he was going to die and all of the family gathered at his house to watch over him. One day he just stood up from his bed and walked to the kitchen where most of the family was hanging out. He started asking why was everybody here in an extremely aggressive way which was completely out of character for him. He was ignoring every reasonable answer and just started ramping up in anger as he was getting louder and almost shouting now and my grandpa and uncles tried to calm him down. Even though he was supposed to be sick and dying a second ago, all of my three uncles were struggling to hold him down. At this point, everybody's getting freaked out and he starts

pointing at my grandma, telling her she should fear him while frothing at the mouth. Now my grandma is a very religious woman and she seemed to be completely unfazed by him and she looked him dead in the eyes and said, I can't fear any of my offspring. Just these words seemed to stun my dad and he backed away immediately. He walked aimlessly in the living room, grabbed a sewing machine and then threw it across the room and stormed out of the house. After a few days he came to the house wearing the same clothes, completely oblivious to the crazy fit, and his health quickly came back to normal after a little time.

Now I don't know what white magic my grandma did to counteract the witch's curse, but I haven't called him crazy since I heard this story. I was out in the forest, camping on a warm summer night. I was pretty familiar with the spot and I never had any incidents there. What added to that sense of security might be that the place looked straight out of a fairy tale book, especially at this time of year. The sky was clear and you could hear the gentle noise of the river with the sun shining on it. This stage made me feel particularly romantical and I decided it was fit for me to spend a night under the stars. I crushed the can of beer that I just finished and pulled my cot out from the tent and gently laid on it.

Nothing can compare to the amazingly clear night sky away from the city's pollution. I kept staring at this wonderful starlight show and slowly drifted off into one of the most restful sleeps of my entire life. When I opened my eyes again I could see the sun had barely started rising. I had rolled onto my side and I couldn't help but feel some tickling sensation in my lower back. No, I'm not a morning person. I would need a little more stimulation to get out of my morning torpor. As I was about to close my eyes again, I feel now something wet brushing against my back. Completely freaked and still dazed out, I roll off the cot, yelling, stumbling on my feet as I come face to face with a large, dark figure huffing and puffing. Still in my morning confusion, I let out an even louder yell and the creature just answered with

a deep grunt. In shock, I stare at it frozen as the beast slowly turns its tail and goes back into the forest. As my brain started waking up and settling off from the insane cocktail of adrenaline wrecking my system, I finally realized that this thing was a black bear. An adult black bear. Thankfully, it seems the beast had no other intention than to sneak up to me and taste the sweat off my back and nothing else. Still in shock, I start packing up my stuff and vow that I'll never sleep in the open air again. All I ever wanted to do was live in a big city. Being from a small country town, the big city and bright lights were always extremely appealing to me. I finally got my wish when I made the move to the city.

I loved everything about it at first. The nightlife, the hustle, the bustle, and the people. I felt like I was tailor-made for the city, you know? I found an apartment on the 20th floor of a building and the view was incredible. I could see a sea of lights every night and the sounds were amazing. It felt like the city was a living and breathing organism. What I loved about this apartment was that I was on the top floor. I had nobody above me to distract me.

However, my neighbors below me were another story. One night after work, it was late and I had picked up a job as a bartender. I made my way home for some much needed rest. While I was getting into more comfortable clothes, I thought I could hear screaming. I turned the TV to mute and I listened intently. It was undeniably screaming. I was able to pinpoint where the screams were coming from and it was right below me. At first it was muffled screams. I could hear the tone and inflection of the voices but couldn't make out any of the words. I continued getting ready and noticed that the voices were getting louder.

The apartment had a small screened in balcony and I went out there and I could hear much more clearly. It's like when there was a bad accident and you can't really look away. It was uncomfortable to listen to but I wanted to keep listening and as horrible as that may sound, it was clearly a male and female arguing. The male was going insane. I could clearly hear things like, you don't think I'll do it and I'd love to see if you can fly. My first thought was, is he going to throw his chick out the window or something? Then I heard the woman get extra loud when she said, you have no idea what I can do and whom I know. Aversions of that argument continued for another five minutes or so until I heard a loud crash. So loud that it vibrated my entire screened-in

balcony. It was quiet for a couple of seconds and just as I started to fear the worst, I heard another voice now. It was a different male voice and he screamed, Look what you did, you idiot! The woman started to scream back at him. I didn't hear the other man so I started to let my mind wander again as to what happened. The briefest of relief came over me when I heard the first guy start shouting again. At this point, all three people were just shouting

almost incoherently to each other. I contemplated for a while what I should do. Clearly, I should have just called the cops, but I didn't, and instead, I made a choice that I would soon come to regret. As you would see in movies or shows, I grabbed a broomstick and I just banged on the floor in my living room. That was my attempt to alert the neighbors that they were loud and to just keep it down. After my assault on the floorboards, I listened and I didn't hear anything. I went back out to the balcony to see if I could hear anything and it was still quiet. I figured for a moment that I had accomplished my goal, but I could not have been more wrong. They must have gone out to their balcony because now they started to scream at me.

I had heard one of the men first as he addressed his anger at me saying, Are you serious? Do you have a problem? I just stayed quiet. Then I heard the woman, her responding, mind your business, this doesn't concern you. Now embarrassed, I quietly went inside and just wanted this ordeal to be over. I could hear the muffled screaming, but now I couldn't tell if they were yelling at me or yelling amongst themselves. I can't even begin to explain how uncomfortable it is to sit and just hear this level of screaming. The type of screaming that I would consider borderline violence, really. And then finally, it stopped. It was finally quiet

enough for nearly 20 minutes, and I turned off the TV and just got into bed. And just as I was dozing off, I heard a knock at the door. I thought maybe I was going in and out of consciousness and maybe I dreamed the knock at the door, but I slowly got out of bed and made my way to the door. I heard the knock again and it was clearly a knock and not my imagination. I asked who it was and the only response I got was another slow series of knocks. The apartments I lived in all had small cameras on the side of the door so I was able to pull up the camera. It was two guys and a girl and right away I realized that it had to be my neighbors from below me. I didn't answer the door and then the knocks kept coming. The woman was doing the knocking and the two men just stood behind her with their hands in their pockets it seemed.

I'm not sure what they planned on doing at 3.30 in the morning. I just continued to ignore them at the door and then that's when the one guy started beating on the door with his fist. I was able to get a good look at the guy. He was huge. He was bald and had a tight beard. He had some sort of line work tattoo coming from the back of his shirt to the bottom of his skull. He had a fist that looked like a boulder as he banged on the door. And they knew about the camera since they'd lived in the building and that's when the man leaned over to the camera box and started to whisper, open the door, open the door, open the door. And he just kept saying that on repeat. I didn't respond. and in fact, I finally, thank God, did call the police. I went to the bedroom and shut the door and whispered to the dispatch operator.

I remained on the phone with them until they sent someone. The entire time I waited, they just kept knocking and whispering open the door. It was still standing there when the police finally showed up. One of the officers escorted them away and I'm not sure what happened to them after that. I spoke with one of the police officers after the other one got them off my floor. I don't think they were below me because I couldn't hear anything and I gave the officer my entire account of the evening and that was basically it. I never heard back from the police but I also never had a run in with these three again. I also took extra precautions after this and run-in with these three again. I also took extra precautions after this and locked my door with an extra lock.

And I never heard another peep from that apartment below me after this, which I found most strange of all about all of this. Even though I had just moved to the city not that long before, I had my fill of the city after this night, and once my lease was up, I moved back to the country, where it was quiet all the time. To be continued... We love the place and it's our first place together so for that reason it's very special to us. I have lived in apartments before and they can be less than ideal. This place on the other hand was great. The apartment unit was recently remodeled and everything was brand new. It was a great little place to start this chapter of our lives. Now I know this may sound ridiculous but for me one of the best parts was behind the apartments. There was a small path that led to a local breakfast diner.

Anybody who knows me knows I can crush some bacon and eggs every day of the week. I told my girlfriend about the short path and told her that on Sunday, when she was off and free from work, that we would have to have a little walk over to the diner. Sunday came and we made our way to the path. Now, it's important to note that the path itself is maybe 30 yards or so. It's not very long. It is literally a short dirt path surrounded by a massive path of trees. When we were walking over to the diner, we noticed a bag of clothes just sitting in the middle of the dirt path. We both just looked at it and kept walking.

I mean, sure, it was weird, but it was breakfast time, and I wasn't worried about a bag of clothes. I figured someone just dropped it while walking to the diner or something. And after our amazing breakfast, we walked back and noticed that the bag was gone. I said to my girlfriend, see, I told you someone just dropped it. And she begrudgingly agreed, but we went about our day. I worked from home during the week, so I would walk over to the diner every morning. The next day, when I walked to the diner, I noticed the bag again, but this time, it was to the side of the path instead of just in the middle of the walkway. I just figured that I missed it yesterday and somebody must have just moved it, and that's why we didn't see it when we walked back to the apartment. After breakfast, when I walked back, I saw someone going through the bag.

I cautiously walked by just because it looked like some strange man. When I got closer, the man turned around and looked at me with a sort of crazed look in his eyes, but I kept walking and just gave him a friendly good morning. The man said nothing, but out of the thick trees, a very small and frail looking woman appeared. Her legs looked more like twigs and she was missing most of her teeth. I instinctively jumped back just because it was very alarming. In a low, raspy voice,

almost like she smoked eight cigarettes a day for breakfast alone, she says, Keep walking. I didn't engage with those two at all. I did keep walking and just shook my head. I didn't want to tell my girlfriend about that because I figured that she would never want to walk over to that diner again and I was pretty sure that this was just some random one-time event with just some shady characters. I didn't go to breakfast until Friday. I made my way to the path and I was instantly relieved that the bag was gone. While I was walking down the short path, I investigated the tree line where the bag was located the last time I walked and

I saw the silhouettes of two people standing in the foliage. I didn't stop and look and ultimately just kept going. My gut told me who was standing there but I didn't want to take any chances. I felt uneasy during my meal and I didn't want to walk by that path again. I had visions in my head of those two people jumping out and trying to rob me or something. So after breakfast, instead of walking through the pathway, I walked the long way, all the way around which ended up being about 40 minutes compared to the quick 5 minutes believe it or not. I forgot to tell my girlfriend about the experience that I had that day. When Sunday came, she suggested that we go to the diner.

Now I was pumped for breakfast and sadly, I had already completely forgotten about the brief experience that I had on that path. As I write this and I'm listing the events that happened, I'm ashamed that I didn't remember but at that moment, since nothing really had happened, I just didn't think about it. It wasn't until we got to the path that Sunday morning that I remembered what had happened. I stopped for a quick second but then kept going. I didn't want to scare my girlfriend and there was a chance the two were gone. While we were walking, she was telling me some story and I was watching the tree line for any movement. About halfway through the path, the man ran out of the woods and stood blocking our path. The woman came out and stood behind us. My girlfriend, trying to be rational, tried to

communicate with the two, but neither of them said anything and just started inching closer behind us. My girlfriend, trying to be rational, tried to communicate with the two, but neither of them said anything and just started inching closer to us. The gap was closing, and I could feel the panic start setting in. I grabbed my girlfriend's hand, and as I attempted to make my move, instead of running through the guy, who was significantly larger than the woman, I turned and ran through the skinny woman like I was a truck. As I was running through the woman, she somehow got a hold of my back and scratched me with her nails, which surprisingly broke my skin. She screamed one of the most horrific noises I had ever heard when we ran by. As we ran back to our apartment, I could hear them fighting on the path, but I couldn't make out the words. We just called the police when we got back and reported the incident but of course,

they were already gone when they went to check. The apartment has cameras all over the lot but none of them reached the path so they had no footage of the two. About 20 feet into the thickness they found sleeping bags, trash, and bottles. These two had been living on the path for a while before they finally decided to attack us. Thankfully, we didn't sustain any real injuries and as far as we know, nobody else got hurt or attacked. We feel a little uneasy that these two were never caught and unfortunately, no new information was ever reported. I make the short drive now whenever I go to the diner and I plan on never taking that short path ever again. A couple of years ago, when I was in between jobs, I moved into an apartment to save money. The apartment complex was beautiful. It was a smaller complex located right in the heart of a quiet and nestled community. Most of the residents in the

complex were older folks that were retired and just didn't need the space of an entire house. When I was moving into the building, I noticed another young person like me watching from one of the windows. It was a beautiful girl, someone that personally I would consider to be out of my league. Unfortunately, my career didn't allow for much dating. After moving in, I noticed that often I would come or go from the parking lot and I would see the woman looking at me. I just assumed that she was nosy or something like that and I didn't think for one second that she had any interest in me. Down the road from the complex was a grocery store that was very convenient to stop in on my way home from work. One afternoon after work,

when I stopped in the store to grab some dinner, I ended up physically running into the girl who had been staring at me for a few days now, and I literally mean that we physically collided with each other. I was turning into an aisle with my head on my phone and she was walking out of the aisle. In a nervous voice she said, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm just an idiot sometimes. I started to say it was okay but stopped when I realized who it was. Once everything clicked I said, hey, are you the girl that lives in my building? She started to smile and blush and then said, Yeah, that's me. I'm usually the one who gets nervous and blushes uncontrollably in these kinds of situations,

so it was nice that the heat was on someone else for a change. She made some comments about her stupid cheeks turning red, and I responded by telling her that in high school, my friends used to call me a cherry pie because my face was always red, and we both laughed as I diffused the tension. We made small talk for a little while right there in the store, and then that evolved into a real conversation. Finally, I worked up the courage to ask if she wanted to come over for dinner tonight since we were practically neighbors. She smiled and looked thrilled by the offer. She accepted and said that she would be over at around 7, and we exchanged numbers and went about our shopping. I was so

excited and nervous about my date with this very attractive neighbor that I had. I realized that I only had about an hour to clean my apartment and get ready. I hadn't had a real date since my freshman year of college, over four years ago, so I was admittedly a train wreck in my mind. I even remember while I was cleaning the apartment I got a text from her that said, I can't wait for tonight, with a heart. Before I knew it, it was seven, and she was knocking on my door. The first several hours were amazing. We talked, ate dinner, had some wine, and just had a great evening.

I felt like this was my first real adult date, and I was proud of how it was unfolding. Late in the evening, I was ready for bed. This was a weeknight, and I had to work the next day, and I could tell that she wanted to stay, but I made it clear that I wasn't ready for anything further than this. She was understanding, and we said goodnight at around 11pm. When I walked her to her door, which sat about 30 feet from my door, I kissed her goodnight and she smiled. I walked inside my apartment with an overwhelming feeling of joy and happiness. I woke up at around 3am that morning just to use the bathroom and I noticed something weird as I walked into the hall. And the light that was shining under the door to my apartment was a shadow, like someone was standing in front of my door. I figured it was my tired

eyes just playing tricks on me so I didn't worry too much. After the bathroom when I walked by the door again I noticed that the obstruction to the light was still there. I quietly went over to the door and looked through the peephole in the door. Standing right outside my door was the girl that I had just shared an entire evening with. She looked like she was mumbling something under her breath, but I wasn't sure. If I ever look through one of those holes, they're not very clear sometimes, so I watched for a few seconds and she didn't move at all. I snuck back into my room and grabbed my phone. I made sure that it was silent and went back to the door and I texted her phone and said,

hey I can't sleep but I just wanted to let you know that I had a great time tonight. Seconds later she grabbed her phone from her pocket and with no expression on her face she responded with, me too, with an exclamation point, I can't wait to see you again. I waited for a moment and then sent another text that said, I'm surprised you're awake, what are you up to? Her response turned the butterflies in my stomach to stone when she responded with, oh just laying in bed watching Netflix. I couldn't understand why she was standing there and lying about it. I didn't respond to her text right away. I had no idea what to say to this woman or how to approach a situation like this.

While I was thinking of something to say, she texted me again, this time saying, If you want, I can come back, or you can come here. The text was followed by a bunch of emojis. I started to type a response but kept deleting whatever I typed. While I was typing, she texted me again and said, you have nothing to be afraid of. And that text hit me differently for some reason. I finally sent a simple text that just read, thanks for the offer but I'm really tired. I looked through the hole as she read the message and still with no expression on her face she put the phone back in her pocket and looked right at the peephole. I knew she couldn't see me, but the horror that

I felt when I sort of made eye contact with the woman through the door was almost indescribable. The look on her face was not the same look I had just admired that evening prior. Her eyes looked cold and I have no idea what her intentions were, but I just felt like they weren't good. I know I'm not good at dating, but I do know standing outside someone's door in the middle of the night motionless is not normal behavior. I decided to text her one last time and said, Hey, did you hear anything funny in the hall? I thought I heard a knock on my door. This was my poor attempt to try and fish something out of her or at least elicit some reaction. She looked at the text for a minute, then back at the peephole

with her cold eyes as if she knew I was there. And without moving from her position, she texted me one last time that said, you're a smart boy. Very smart. Sleep tight. She put her head back down and after about five minutes of just standing there, she turned around and went back to her apartment. She looked like she had something tucked in the back of her pants, but looking through the peephole, this could have just been my imagination, so I wasn't sure. I texted her the next day, and she never responded. Even though she lived a few doors down, I never did run into her again. I left a note for her one time and slipped it under her door and still never heard from her. I never told the apartment management because I didn't really think anything could be done. It was an unnerving and terrifying experience for me, but I had no proof other than a few text

messages that didn't show anything legal or really make any sense. I never saw her again, which is insane considering that I lived at this apartment for six months after this experience. The curtains were always shut when I would get home from work, and I never crossed paths with her in the hallway. Now, I know this story isn't your typical, oh god, I'm gonna die story, but to put yourself in my shoes, I guarantee you wouldn't want to be me. The memory of that look in her eyes still haunts me to this day. Friends have always joked with me that she probably was just looking for some adult companionship, but I promise you this was different. Be careful out there because you never know what kind of intentions people have deep down. I was lucky enough to get accepted into an apartment building that I had hoped to get

into for years. Once I was making enough money in my current job to pay off my student loans and become debt free, I applied to live in my dream apartment. The interior itself was really spacious and gave a really sleek and modern vibe. My favorite part was the little balcony where I could enjoy sunrises and sunsets or just quiet with my thoughts and meditate to the sounds outside the apartment. When there was an opening in the building and I was accepted, I was beyond excited. I started figuring out what I could bring from my current place and what I would have to buy for the new spot.

I didn't have to worry about a commute because I am lucky enough to work from home. Another reason why I wanted a bigger space was to accommodate a larger office, somewhere where I could stretch my legs and get a bigger chair and desk. The move-in went smoothly and I have been really loving my time here so far. Well, that was until a few months ago. As I said, the balcony was my favorite part of my apartment. I spent many mornings and nights out there either reading, meditating, and just messing around on my phone. The balcony faces another apartment building so there really isn't much of a view. They don't have balconies across the way but they all have tall windows that

basically match the size of my sliding glass door that takes you to the balcony. One random night about six weeks after I moved in I got a weird feeling that I was being watched or that someone was in my apartment. I went back inside and looked around and the eerie feeling subsided but once I went back outside to read, I got the same feeling again. I wasn't sure if it was from the book that I was reading or if I was just randomly getting anxious. I looked up at my book and looked across the way towards the other apartment building and after about a minute of staring blankly, I finally caught someone standing in front of the window, staring in what appeared to be my direction.

As soon as I stood up and looked that way, the curtain shuffled and the figure was gone. I really didn't think much of it at the time and could have been anything and it was silly to think that it was someone just staring at me. However, as the days went on, I couldn't help but shake that same feeling that I was being watched. It even made me stop wanting to go out onto the balcony, especially at night. But one night after an extremely long day of work and a few mixed drinks under my belt, I decided to head outside and scroll through social media and just enjoy a nice evening breeze. All was normal until I noticed a flashing light at one of the windows across the street. The light was flickering on and

off like someone was hitting the switch up and down. As I stood up to get a better look, it stopped and the light stayed on. Pressed against the glass was a man, waving and pointing. At first, I couldn't make out what the motion was, but it was definitely pointing in my direction, and then a very energetic wave. I tried to look around to see if I could see if anyone surrounding my apartment was maybe out on their balcony or waving to the person across the street. However, when I looked back, the man again was pointing, as if to infer that he was confirming he indeed was trying to get my attention or wave to me. I didn't know what to do, so I

reluctantly gave a half wave back. Once I did that, the man's gesturing stopped. He was too far away, so I couldn't make out his face or expression, but I could see that it was completely still now and just staring at me. I stared back for a minute or so and then decided that it would probably be best to stay inside for the night. I had trouble falling asleep. I had a lot running through my mind from work and also that instant, even though harmless, was still just really weird. The next day I had to go out and run a bunch of errands so I woke up really early so I could still have a majority of the day to relax and binge some TV. As I got home, I was feeling very accomplished and had basically forgotten about everything that had transpired the

previous day. After I put the groceries away and cleaned up a little bit, I made a cup of hot tea and honey. It was a little cooler out than the previous day, so I put on some sweats and a hoodie and went outside to drink my tea on the balcony. When I went to sit down, I noticed that there was a piece of paper on my table. It was a piece of pink paper about the size of a sticky note, and it was taped down. All that was on it was an image of a smiley face, but the eyes were stars instead of dots. The horrifying thing about this scenario is not only that my apartment door was locked before I

left and when I got home, but also there was a lock on the sliding door to get onto the balcony, and that was also locked before I left and when I arrived home. It's been a little over two months since this occurred. I haven't gone out to the balcony really at all since this happened and to be honest, I really haven't left my apartment that much outside of when I need to. I haven't reported anything to the building and I've been trying to brush the incident off. Why is Smiley faced with stars in the eyes? Is there any significance to that?

I tried to google it but couldn't find anything really. Anyway, hopefully this is my last update and my dream apartment can remain that and I moved into a small apartment with our recently single mother. It's not important to the story, but just for full transparency, dad was a horrible person and not in the picture. My dear mother did everything she possibly could for us kids. We hated moving to that small apartment, but it was a roof over our heads, I guess. I look back at those days now and I'm shocked that we even lived there. It's a very bad section of the city but that's all my

mom could afford back then. Fortunately for us, my brother and I didn't realize just how bad it was. Sometimes the stupid innocence of a child can be bliss. My mom was working two jobs back then to save up enough money so we could move out at the earliest possible chance. She trusted us kids, but just had one rule. When she wasn't home, never leave the apartment or open the door for anybody. Again, thinking back to those days as I write this, I'm still utterly shocked that she just left us alone there. But I don't fault her. Mom had to do what she had to do, and she was an absolute

trooper for it. Back then, I was a little too young to be left alone, especially in that area of the city, but my brother was old enough to watch me for several hours while my mom waited tables at a local diner. My brother was not like me. I was quiet and never in trouble. My brother Jack, whom we called Jackie, was the complete opposite. He was constantly in trouble in school and with his friends' parents. He was the kid who would find trouble, even when he wasn't looking for it, and with all that being said, he is still my older brother, and of course, I looked up to him and just wanted to be just like him. But one specific night that has been burned into my memories forever, mom left for her late shift at the diner and left Jackie in charge. These nights we would usually watch

something on TV, eat some food and go to sleep before mom would even get home. But on this specific night, Jackie had other plans. Before I break down the story, I need to paint a picture of the apartment building. The building was an older brick building. You wouldn't even know if it was an apartment building unless you lived there. In fact, the building is abandoned now as I write this, looking back. We lived on the fifth floor, which was the top floor of the building. When we would get home from school, we would take the stairs to our floor because the only elevator was either broken or had something going on in there that we kids shouldn't see. And this is where things get a little weird.

When taking the stairs, you would have to get off on the fourth floor because for some reason the staircase on this side didn't go up to the fifth floor. Once on the fourth floor, you would have to walk all the way to the end of the hall to the left and take a separate staircase up to the fifth floor. I'm not sure why the building was built this way, but it was my life for several months. When making your way down the long hallway on the fourth floor, you couldn't help but notice the door at the end of the hall on the right. It was boarded up the entire time we lived in the building. Jackie would always tell me that it was haunted or that a crazed madman lived there. It always scared the heck out of me though.

Whenever we got home, I would run as fast as I could to the stairs. Unfortunately, I had to see it every day because it sat across from the staircase to the fifth floor. Every day the door made me uneasy and scared and I couldn't even begin to form thoughts back then as to why. Okay, so now that I've laid out the structure a little bit, I'll tell you my actual story. For me personally, just the memory of that stupid door is enough to give me goosebumps, but unfortunately for me, that's not the story I'm telling you today. That night while mom was working, my brother started to talk about breaking into that apartment. I knew it was wrong, and I felt in my gut that it was a bad idea. After a little convincing, I gave in to his plan because I wanted to be cool and brave like my brother.

I also figured if kids at school knew what I did, maybe I wouldn't be bullied as much. Around 10pm, we snuck down to the fourth floor. We made sure nobody was around, and just like most nights, it was completely desolate in those halls. I remember staring up at the door and feeling like I was going to faint. I remember having the thought that because my heart was beating so fast, I was wondering if a child could have a heart attack. I'm not sure where he learned it, but my brother broke the lock and we entered the apartment. It was disgusting inside. It smelled so bad. I distinctly have a memory of the smell inside being so overwhelming that I had tears in my eyes. None of the windows

had any shades or curtains, so even though it was dark outside, the entire apartment was illuminated by the orange light from the street post that literally sat right outside the windows. The apartment was filled to the brim with junk, boxes and furniture everywhere. You couldn't even walk on the floor because there was so much debris and trash lying around. It didn't click right away as to why the apartment had all this clutter inside. I was too preoccupied with the smell to have any other thoughts. As we shimmied our way through the apartment, my brother stopped instantly and grabbed my chest. I stopped and looked at him and he gestured for me to be quiet. Before I could process what was happening, he gestured again for me to duck down and essentially push me down to the ground himself.

As I sat hiding behind a mountain of trash, I heard a voice coming from the far side of the room. It was low and gruff, and the voice sounded like it was straining to talk and I couldn't make out the first thing he said. But then I heard the second part and he said, I know you're back here. I've been waiting for you. I was about ready to burst into tears, but my brother kept eye contact and kept me quiet. He just kept shaking his head and gesturing for me to remain quiet. The man spoke up again. I know you're hiding in here. Come out. I got something for you. He must have moved because I could hear the shuffling of trash. Is that you? The man shouted, and it sounded like he struck a pile of

trash with something heavy. That's not you, but I know you're still here. I could hear the man closing in on a hiding spot. Thank God for my brother because I would have sat there until this man found me. When the man was standing right behind the pile we were hiding behind, my brother jumped out, tackled the man to the ground. Jackie grabbed my hand and we ran out of the apartment as fast as we could. As we were running out of the apartment, I caught a quick glimpse of the man as he was getting to his feet. It was an older man, very skinny,

and he looked like he hadn't eaten or showered in weeks. I just remember thinking, it looked like his cheeks were melting off his face. We ran to our apartment and locked the door. Jackie stood in the kitchen with a knife the entire night until my mom got home. He convinced me not to tell my mom because he knew he would be in trouble forever and my mom would probably quit that job and we needed the money badly. Nothing ever happened after that. I never saw the guy again and the next day the door was boarded up again. We never mentioned it to the neighbors or anybody because we were terrified of getting into trouble.

As an adult, I understand a bit more about what happened that evening. Clearly it was an older guy who had some sort of severe hoarding issue. The reason why he had the door boarded up was probably because he dealt with a lot of robberies in that neighborhood. My brother and I just happened to stumble into that place at the wrong time, when the man was finally ready to act. I realized to some that this story may not be edge of your seat terrifying or scary, but as a kid this was beyond traumatizing. I will say, the events of this story, though haunting to my memory, made me never want to break into any place ever again. To be continued... This is a story that I find creepy and very unnerving, more than just scary. Last year I moved into a new apartment building.

As a recent college graduate, I didn't have the funds to afford my house. I was unable to secure a job in my field but needed to wait until I saved up enough money to be able to move into a house. At first, the apartment life wasn't too bad for me. I lived in an apartment when I was in college, so I knew for the most part what I was getting into. The only thing I was worried about was the fact that I worked from home, and I wasn't sure if living in such proximity to others would distract or disrupt me. Fortunately for me, the apartment complex was quiet almost all the time. Especially during the day when I worked, there were very few cars in the parking lot. Something to note about

me is that I have a horrible tendency to be overly observant. Friends have so kindly referred to me as a creep, in other words. Shortly after moving into the apartment, I made a mental note of all the tenants in my building. I have always done this, even since I was a kid. I'm not sure if it's deep-rooted trust issues or what, but within a week, I knew who lived in my building and what cars they drove. My computer sat right next to the window, and often when I was in a meeting or in a call, I would stare out the window and play my own game, wondering where people were going, or what they were doing for the day.

I understand how boring my life is, I admit it, but I digress. One day, though, I saw a woman come into my building. I only note this because I didn't recognize this woman and she didn't drive either. Probably 15 minutes later, I noticed her leave and walk into the building across the parking lot. Several minutes later, she left again and walked into the tree line behind the other building. It was weird but not a red flag. It could have been any number of reasons why. The only thing I kept wondering was how she got into the buildings.

The doors are locked unless you have a key to the building and every building has a different key. A few days later I was sitting at my computer and I happened to see this lady again. This time I was a bit more curious. I watched her emerge practically out of nowhere and make her way to the entrance of my building. Being on the third floor I have the nice advantage of seeing the complex from my window. I checked the camera for my ring doorbell but she wasn't on my floor. I left my apartment to be nosy and see if I could find where this girl was in the building. I figured that I would make my way to the laundry room and walk back and if I didn't see her during that time then I would just let things go. I made it to the laundry room and when I was walking back I saw the woman come from the apartment that sat below mine.

She left the apartment quickly and bumped into me. We exchanged an awkward glance and I said I was sorry. She nodded in a strange way and kept going. I ran back to my apartment and watched her leave my building. She glanced back at the door a few times and then made her way to the building across the parking lot again. I thought maybe my imagination was running wild, but it felt like something wasn't right. I knew that the lady that lived below me was a widowed woman in her 70s. This strange woman could have been her daughter, but as I said before, something just didn't feel right about that. The look on her face was a look of anxiety. I kept monitoring the next few days, but I didn't see her again until almost a week later.

Just as always, I saw her appear out of nowhere. She kept looking over her shoulder as she approached my building. She entered the building, and as I listened, it sounded like she was outside of my apartment. I pulled up the video feed from my camera, and to my surprise, she was right outside, but not at my door. She was at the door of the guy who lived across the hall. She looked nervous as she kept knocking on the door lightly and looking back and forth. After a minute or so she pulled out a key and opened the door. I waited and watched the camera for 16 minutes until the door opened again and she left briskly. Right after leaving his apartment she made her way across the parking lot again and the same pattern continued.

Now I felt uneasy about the situation so I planned on asking my neighbor across the hall if she was expecting a visitor. That night when he got home, I waited a little while and then went and knocked on his door. The guy looked annoyed and asked what I wanted. I told him what happened and asked if he was expecting anyone in his apartment today. He was as white as a ghost after I told him. He told me that he was annoyed because he had money that he was sure that he left on the dresser and it was gone. He figured that he misplaced it but now he was scared that somebody had broken into his apartment. We looked back at the footage and he looked sick. He thought the woman looked familiar but it was nobody he directly knew. We went to the main office and gave them all the information.

Basically they told us to call the main office and the cops as soon as we see this woman again. Thankfully, only two days later the woman came back and I called the police right away. She must have seen the cop car because as soon as the cops pulled in, minutes later the woman ran out in a full sprint. The cops chased her and caught her before she could break into the tree line. As it turns out, the woman basically had some type of skeleton key to the apartments that only the maintenance crew had access to. This woman was the girlfriend of the maintenance man that was fired right before I moved in. Apparently this guy was fired and arrested for stalking a woman who lived somewhere

in the complex. And to get revenge apparently, he was having his girlfriend break into the apartment and rob them of their valuables. The most disturbing detail was that this guy knew all the schedules of the people he had his girlfriend rob, so he knew who wouldn't be in their apartment at certain times. Now even though this isn't super scary from my perspective, the thought of someone just being in your home and taking your valuables is so disturbing to me. The idea that someone can have access to your home without you knowing is enough to give me nightmares. And thankfully, for once, my nosy nature finally served some good. In 2018, I broke up with my boyfriend and was nearly homeless.

I moved across the country with him and as life sometimes happens, it didn't work out. Unfortunately, I didn't know anyone where I was and I had nowhere to go. I was living out of my car for a couple of days until I found a beautiful little apartment complex that was accepting new tenants. I went in and pleaded my case to the management team there and thankfully they pulled some strings and got me in right away. I didn't have much to move in at first, since most of the stuff I left at my last place. As I slowly started to gather furniture, the place started to feel like a home. My cute little one-bedroom studio apartment became my pride and joy. It didn't take long for my ex-boyfriend to find where I was, and I kid you

not, he would drop off boxes full of my stuff and leave it on the front steps of the apartment building. A real classy boy, that one. The apartments I was living in offered garages for your car or storage. Most of the tenants used it for storage. The only thing that wasn't ideal was that you were sharing the garage with another random tenant and they weren't sorted out by the building or apartment number but basically by whatever one was available. I got a garage unit that thankfully wasn't that far of a walk from my apartment. They had one left and I felt incredibly lucky. When I made my way to the garage and opened it up, I was surprised to see an older man sitting in there just rocking in a chair. He was angry as

soon as I opened the door and he shouted, hey, get out of here, this is my garage. I was a bit uncomfortable, but I always stand my ground. In a very polite voice, I responded to the man, I'm sorry sir, but I just purchased the other half of this garage for my storage. I'm sorry, but you'll have to share now. The man didn't like this. He got up out of his chair and made his way to the door and he started shouting, I don't think so.

The man literally started to grab my boxes and throw them back into the parking lot. As I stood there, blown away by the antics of this man, he continued to complain, I pay for this space, it's mine. Get your crap out of there. Not wanting to escalate this anymore, I went back to the office and told the woman in charge that the old guy wouldn't let me in the garage. She looked annoyed as if this had been a problem before. And she went down there and laid down the law with this older guy. They went back and forth, but ultimately it ended with the guy moving his stuff to his side of the line. Yes, there was a literal line in the middle of the garage separating the two sides for each tenant. I brought my stuff in there as quickly as I could because I wanted

nothing to do with this guy. He grumbled to himself the entire time I brought my stuff over and I just ignored him. The next couple of days I had a bad feeling about my stuff. I didn't have anything insanely valuable in there but most of the stuff in those boxes were personal belongings or sentimental to me in some way. One night early in the evening I decided to go check on my stuff and I couldn't believe what I saw. The man sitting in his chair rocking back and forth and wearing one of my scarves. I started to yell at the guy and he responded, This is my scarf little lady. And that's when I noticed that he had gone through all of my boxes and thrown my belongings all over the garage.

Clothes, paperwork, furniture, everything on my side were thrown all over the place. I called him out on it and he became incredibly hostile and said, I didn't touch your stuff. Now you relax. I went back to the management of the apartments and told them everything. She approached the man and they went at it again. The old man denied touching my stuff and claimed that it was like that when he came into the garage. I didn't buy it and neither did the manager. I believe she threatened to evict the guy and told him that he could no longer have access to the garage.

He had two days to get all of his belongings out of there. The man was upset and screaming. I almost felt bad for him until I remembered all of my stuff on the ground. The man left the garage enraged. I could hear him screaming all the way through the parking lot. When he was gone, I closed the door and started to pick up my belongings. Curiosity got the better of me and I started to glance at his side. This guy had a ton of interesting stuff when I stopped to look at his side. It wasn't just junk and clutter but really unbelievable antiques. He had stuff from old wars, old movie posters, books and anything cool you can think of. It was like a vault of treasure.

I continued to put my stuff away and that's when I noticed my scarf. He was right. The scarf he was wearing was in fact his scarf. I felt horrible and thought I owed the guy an apology. I even decided to myself that if I don't see him within the next two days, I'll tell the manager that he can store his stuff in my garage. I just don't want him in there unless I'm there. The next morning, I woke up to the sound of

sirens outside. I looked out from my balcony and I could see that the sirens were outside of my garage. I ran down there and I couldn't believe my eyes. The older man looked like he had been hit by a bus but was standing up talking to the police and the manager of the apartments. I looked back at the car and it was insane. It was my ex-boyfriend. I ran over to the police and asked what was going on and basically my ex had been breaking into my garage unit and going through my stuff, basically just trying to make my life a nightmare. He wasn't trying to rob or steal anything. The old man knew that he was innocent and went down to the garage and waited all night for something to happen. Around 5am my ex started breaking in and once he went over to my boxes and threw stuff around, the old man confronted him. A brief fight ensued and

the old guy was like some decorated war hero and even at his advanced age he was able to take down my ex. I thanked the man and tried to give him something, but he just wanted his garage back. I'm so thankful that this man cared enough about his stuff that he waited all night to prove that he was innocent, and thankfully he stopped him when he did because I don't know how far my ex would have gone or what he was capable of. I fed the old man leftovers for the year that I lived in that apartment, and I have since moved home with my parents. Don't judge a book by its cover, because sometimes it's the people we least expect that become our guardian angels. To be continued... Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7pm EST.

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